Many B40 families are struggling to make ends meet with their recent loss of jobs and income due to the Movement Control Order (MCO) imposed by the government since 18th March. With the latest announcement of the MCO being extended to the 28th April, these vulnerable B40 communities are pleading for help.

In recognizing the situation, Syarikat Takaful Malaysia Keluarga Bhd (“Takaful Malaysia”) partnered with Taylor’s Education Group (“Taylor’s”) to disburse some much needed essential goods while deploying online modules to encourage families to bond.

Adhering to their brand promise of “We Protect. We Care. We Share.”, group chief executive officer Datuk Seri Mohamed Hassan Kamil said that the company was fulfilling its corporate philosophy in prioritizing the community. “We believe in taking swift actions to enable more purchase of essential goods for our B40 communities. We are more than happy to be part of the campaign by Taylor’s as we also recognized the importance of ensuring the community continuously bond with their families through learning modules. We want them to know that we care for them beyond just feeding them food, but also nurturing their minds and continue to give them hope,” he said in a statement today.

The online module created by Taylor’s required the participants to create 3 posters to depict scenarios of Protecting, Caring and Sharing within their family unit in order to win essential goods worth RM100 each. These posters were completed by 95 family units, with parents coaching their children through the process.

“We’ve been supporting these families for so many years and it saddened us to see them struggling to cope with this sudden change. We are grateful that this partnership with Takaful provided us with the opportunity to support these families with some much needed food and at the same time, provide them with some activities to keep them productive at home. They were indeed very creative as we received many impressive submissions” said May Wong, Taylor’s group communications and corporate social responsibility manager.

Through the competition jointly organized by Taylor’s and Takaful, 5 children walked away with RM200 worth of groceries and stationaries each. Another top 70 entrants were awarded RM100 worth of groceries and stationaries per submission.

“It’s such a refreshing activity for our family. My son is now in year 6 and this activity helped him relax while preparing for his UPSR, especially when needs to be locked in due to the MCO”, said Zubaidah binti Abdullah, resident of PPR Pantai Ria and one of the top 10 winners. When asked about her creation, she said, “we took two days to complete it because we wanted to do our best as a family. For examples, though we wanted to use water colour, but we have a 7 year old who doesn’t know how to use it yet, so we decided to use both colour pencils and water colour. You can see that our poster is a blend of both. I am thankful for the family bonding time over this activity!” said the mother of two.

Takaful prioritizes giving back to the communities by supporting the vulnerable communities through impactful corporate citizenship programs.

Emotional well-being online module helped B40 children cope with change in this challenging time and won their families some much needed groceries and stationaries.

COVID-19 pandemic forces families to embrace changes in their daily routine as schools, nonessential businesses and social events are put on hold. While some families are coping better with the Movement Control Order (MCO) imposed by the government since 18th March, many B40 families are struggling to make end meets with loss of their daily income. Children are affected too by the sudden change of their routine. The more privileged children are kept occupied with online learning modules from schools or private learning centers but the B40 children are at a vulnerable state as they may not have access to online learning materials. Acknowledging this fact, Canon Malaysia in partnership with Taylor’s Education Group deployed an emotional well-being module to help the B40 children cope with this change and provided livelihood support in the form of groceries and stationaries.

This is the second jointly organized program between Canon and Taylor’s, following their first successful partnership in April 2019 that benefitted xx number of children from the B40 community. Realizing that the MCO has threatened the livelihood of many B40 families, Canon reached out through Taylor’s and donated RM5,000 worth of items for 45 families from PPR Lembah Pantai area, which has been identified as one of the COVID-19 ‘hot spots’.

“When the government announced the implementation of the MCO, our hearts went to the children that we’ve met during our program last year. We knew their families will be badly impacted by the MCO as most of their parents’ have micro businesses and it will be disrupted,” said (Insert Canon representative name and title here)

“We chose to partner with Taylor’s Education Group as our program last year was successful and they have been consistently supporting the B40 communities” (he/she) continued, explaining that their team quickly connected with Taylor’s and deployed a program to help children cope with the sudden change and to provide a much relief to their parents in the form of groceries and stationaries.

Taylor’s Education Group have been supporting the vulnerable B40 families in the PPR communities since 2016 through entrepreneurship and emotional well-being programs. In view of the need to help these B40 children cope with change, a module donated by HumanKind was deployed and through a social media voting content.

“We’ve been supporting these children for so many years and it saddened us to see them struggling to cope with this sudden change. We are grateful that this second partnership with Canon provided us the opportunity to support these vulnerable children emotionally while contributing some items to relief their families’ burden” said May Wong, Taylor’s group communications and corporate social responsibility manager.

5 children emerged as winners, walking away with RM200 worth of groceries and stationaries each. Another top 40 entries were awarded RM100 worth of groceries and stationaries per submission.

“At first I wasn’t sure how to do the activity, but after discussing with my parents and consulting “Cikgu”, I try it out and had a lot of fun with it. It was my first time doing this activity and I am very happy that many people voted for my creation” said Nur Qaireen Qisha bt Ahmad Shaidan from PPR Pantai Ria, one of the top 5 winners.

When asked about her creation that won her the top 5 spot, she said “I take it as a challenge to hunt around my house for the materials needed. Surprisingly I’ve managed to find quite suitable items despite not having much at home. I just let my instinct and emotions guide me in creating the ‘face’. I thought it looked pretty funny at first but I liked it after taking many pictures of it. I’m so glad people online liked my photo too and voted for it!” said the 9 year old gleefully.

Canon believes in using photos to tell a story and together with Taylor’s encouragement for healthy expressions of emotions, hopefully these vulnerable children can cope better through this change.

Last August, Canon Malaysia brought our Kids 4 Kids Club to KidZania for a one day trip! We all knew that it would something exciting for our children and more so, for those who have yet to set foot into that place!

Our children from the K4K club aren’t all as privileged as other city folks but certainly have the same potential to grow and become great leaders of our nation. Hence, our aim is to expose them to more opportunities, to increase their confidence, instil self-motivation for success, andbuild good character and soft skills that will bring them far in life.

This partnership with Canon certainly brought us a step closer in achieving our goals, where our children gained new ambitions as they were exposed to more career paths that sparked their interest. KidZania provided them first hand experience through role play and moreover, it gave them the opportunity to try out jobs that weren’t taught in school. This widened their perspectives and inspired them to pursue their passions instead of following what people tell them they should do. For instance, with Canon’s guidance, while almost all of them had their first lesson using the DSLR , out of 35 students, 2 of our students discovered their interest in capturing moments and mentioned that photographer can be a possible path to take on. Lastly, their confidence level too increased. Below are some of the findings we identified from the one day trip.

The data might not have portrayed all positively, but from this, we identified areas for improvement and will work hard to make their days with us more fulfilling and impactful. Above all, we would like to thank Canon for giving our children more opportunities, bridging gaps for them with the other children, making a difference for our K4K children in an impactful manner!

For partnership opporutnities, contact us at taylors.community@taylors.edu.my.

Last school break, Closing The Gap Malaysia made their way to Taylor’s University to beat the odds!

What does this mean? Closing The Gap (CTG) Malaysia is an organisation who aims to improve access to higher education for young people from underrepresented backgrounds. They provide support for post-schooling options for their esteemed Scholars, personalised mentoring and career guidance to help them achieve their fullest potential.

We honoured to be given a chance to host their Critical Thinking workshop by an established philosopher Hazman Baharom, where the scholars were challenged to practice critical reasoning (a key skill of the future- or the present). Scholars were required to disect tough articles that tackled current issues regarding the Khat controversy, Lynas, ICERD and so on. It’s amazing to see how these young people, high school and Pre-U students tried their best to apply what they’ve learnt and presented their findings in front of a crowd. It was certainly a very practical and hands on workshop where the students took away valuable lessons. Throughout, CTG also had their mentors come over, not only to guide the students through these brainy activities, but also to share their lives and build relationships.

Moreover, the scholars also had the opportunity to have a lunch chat with Dato Sri’ Nazir Razak and the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Teach For Malaysia who both shared a bit about their life learnings, ambitions, personal experiences and jobs of the future.

Following this, Nathaniel Tan and Deborah Chow from Engage Education, both committed and experienced in Education, was present to share about their life journey, tips on studying effectively and strategies to enter top universities.

To sum up, it was a heavy yet productive day for the scholars, guest speakers and mentors. CTG is making impact for the younger generation! Dofind out more about them here: https://www.facebook.com/ClosingTheGapMalaysia/ and support them in any way you could!

Our latest annual report brings about the main highlights of the year by solidifying the hourglass model in measuring impact for all our projects. Here, we also talk a little bit more on our 4 main focuses in 2020 and our project calendar for this year.

A project by Taylor’s Education Group Corporate Social Responsibility.